I am without Wifi right now so I don’t even remember my last post and I can’t look it up. I am pretty sure my last post was about training so I will start from there.
First off, I found out why I got the job. All the branches have to pick you out of a large pool of people is your resume and your video. My roommate spoke to her FM and asked how they were chosen. Her branch looked for people with an English degree, Education degree or a Korean speaker. At this point I was very confused how I got a job but after much prodding I got an answer out of my FM. My FM chose his group by charisma and the person being overall nice. Yay team charisma!
Monday after training, everyone from the training group did different things depending on what their branch wants. From my understanding, some people went into their branch to watch some classes, mock for their Faculty Manager (FM) while my branch went to apartment hunting. There are 6 newbies including myself starting at Bundang so we ended up seeing around ten places (we are on an hourly salary so monthly people don’t bother reading this). We were exhausted by the end but everyone in the group got a place that was either top pick or top 3 (We had some difficulties because the realtors showed us places that weren’t quite available yet which was kind of a waste of time).
Here is the down low on apartment hunting: it is all about your location. Which you have NO say over. You have to move into a place that is close to the branch that you work at so if you are in an expensive district, your place will probably be small and expensive, the more rural you get the cheaper it will get. From what I heard from people in the training group this can range from 590-1000 thousand won.
On top of that there is a realter fee from about 300-400 thousand won, depending on the price of your place and who you go to etc. ALSO every place we saw was an officetel that was semi-furnished. Be prepared to either order a bed ahead of time, dumpster dive or sleeping on the floor for a while. We though there would be plenty of places that would be fully furnished but we were only offered places with a fridge and washing machine.
This means the 1,500 thousand won they recommend you bring is not going to be enough if you want a bed or not want to eat kimbap everyday. Most people had to pay their first month rent up front (we didn’t) and you don’t get your reimbursement until you start working.
Here is my place. I got the largest apartment that we saw and it was pretty dirty but a trip to Diaso and a bunch of cleaning products got everything cleaned. I can’t tell you exactly how much I have spent so far (mostly because I don’t want to think about it), but its more than they told you to bring. Trust me. Have as much as possible at your disposal. I have been withdrawing from my Canadian account then putting the money back into my Korean account. It is the fastest way for me to transfer money and I don’t care the amount I am getting dinged because I don’t have time to wait.
NEXT: ARC
So our branch was super thoughtful compared to the others. Monday: Apartment Hunt, Tuesday: Free day (we spent at the Immigration Office), Wednesday: Full day to move in, Thursday: Got our tabs and did prep work at the branch Friday: Mock
We had the entire day to go get our Alien Registration Card (ARC) and thank goodness we did. We got there early to beat the line. 6:30am we meet in the lobby of the hotel, 7:50 am we arrive by taxi or subway (we split into two groups). Here is where the confusion began. There is one giant line so we figure it is the place to be. As the line starts moving, our friend who has done this before tells us it is the wrong line. We go towards the main building where we are suppose to be only to be herded back to the line by official looking people. We go into the building and ask where we can get our ARC. They send us back to the main building. We are sent BACK to the first building telling us we are suppose to be in other section of the building. By now we are already pulling our hair out. We find the little ticket stub place and sit patiently because the little booths are ARC are not open. There we sit until 9am when there are signs of movement behind the screen. We are then told by a British lady that we need to go pay for our ARC at the ATM machines by the door so we go and do it. We have to go pick them up rather than having it delivered because the addresses the realtor gave us is of the old system (Korea just switched over to a new system this year).
Our coworker that has done this before is first up. He tells us there is a form we need to fill out. The rest of us crowd around a little table filling it out and gluing our passport pictures to the form. As the second and third go from our group, we figure out we were in fact suppose to be in the main building due to our district. I am the third person and the person who is helping me is on the phone but has my passport so I can’t leave.
I hurry to catch up with m friends but by this time there is about 40 people in front of us because they went to the right building and got their numbers before us. I am extremely hangry at this point and I need to get food in me. One of the girls came with me to get food and just get out of the building. We come back refreshed and in better humour than before. The boys are then super jealous and figure they have enough time to eat and come back. Wrong. The line started to move really fast after they left and they missed their number by about 5 minutes. They just gave up and went to a lady showed them their number and got it done.
The actual handing them your pictures and passport etc takes about 1 minute then another minute getting your finger prints scanned. 2 minutes. We were there for about 4 hours.
Never has paper pushing been so terrible. On the bright site, they don’t take away your passport and they only require one passport photo of you. It’s not that bright I know but it is all I could come up with.
NEXT: At the Branch
We went in got our tabs, and prepped in one of the rooms for hours. Our awesome FM offered to take us out to dinner since he knew the first months are financially rough. It was a great Korean BBQ place that was very friendly and just overall awesome atmosphere. I was given special cuts of meat that weren’t at the buffet because the aujushi thought I was pretty (it was more likely because our FM frequented the place often and he was just treating us nicely because of him but let’s just pretend). My group went back to the branch afterwards to continue prepping for the mocks we would do the next day. I would highly recommend you do this because it is the first impression the FM has of you. He/she will be your boss so you want to work hard and make a good impression.
The next day, we mocked in front of our FM, FA and team leaders. For some, it was great for other it was weaker but he was impressed overall and assigned us people to watch on Monday so we could pick up particular things from each person. It was extremely helpful to finally see the kids on Monday and how the operated in the classroom.
When we regrouped after 2 hours of shadowing a classroom, we went over all the great things the teachers did and went over what we picked up on and got some specific feedback. I was both happy and nervous about my feedback. On he Friday the FM said that my mock was great and didn’t give me negatives. On Monday, he told me I watched my teacher just to see how the classroom was. He was extremely happy with my mock and felt I gave the best first mock he had ever seen and stated he would feel comfortable putting me in a classroom at that moment. O.O No pressure or anything. The worst part of it was that he did it in front of all the newbies. I wasn’t sure what to say to that so it was just a quick thanks.
Anyways, we mocked again on Tuesday (Today) and I again got no feedback. It’s nice to be complimented but at the same time I want to get some because there must be areas I need to work more on, it is unsettling to get no feedback where everyone else has.